


The file you are looking for is no longer available

by Livvy_london



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: After the Game AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Teen rating due to profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24986725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livvy_london/pseuds/Livvy_london
Summary: Gordon never expected anything to change after he logged off 'Half-Life' for the last time, and definitely not the sudden appearance of a rogue AI on his desktop with seemingly no intent to leave. With a stressful day job and Benrey's general attitude, Gordon would think it would be enough to drive him up the wall. But perhaps a helping hand could be just the thing he needs.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	The file you are looking for is no longer available

**Author's Note:**

> If you want an angsty-style ending, the story can end at the line '______'. But I just had to write a nice resolution after that - if that's more your style. Inspired by the actual chat-bot AI of Benrey that I tried to make a while back.  
> Otherwise, please enjoy!

Gordon heaved a huge sigh, pulling his VR headset off his face and setting it down carefully on the end of his bed. He slumped into his swivel chair, running one hand across his head and fluffing up the sweaty hair that had been under his headset. He closed down the game he had just finished and rested his head peacefully on the backrest.

“Hey.”

The familiar voice startled him. His eyes darted to the screen, where a strange new figure stood on the empty desktop screen, about as tall as half the screen height. If the voice wasn't already familiar, the dark blue uniform and helmet were dead giveaways to who this sudden appearance was.

“Benrey? What- what are you doing here? Aren't you..?” He sat up in his seat, utterly confused. Benrey's character smirked at him from his spot on the screen,

“I got bored.”

“But I just-” Gordon paused, allowing his thoughts to catch up. “What about Dr Coomer, Tommy, Bubby... are they here too?”

“Nah. They're doing whatever in the game. You should really keep the game window open though, it doesn’t feel great for any of them when you shut it down bro.” Too stunned to respond, Gordon could only stare at the screen.

“Yo what’s up?” Benrey began again, as if nothing had ever been said.

“I’m too tired for this shit.” He slammed the laptop lid shut, put his headset on top, and crashed into bed. 

After the meagre sleep he'd managed to grab in the night due to the late night, it was no wonder Gordon woke up disoriented and a bit dazed. He was on autopilot, grabbing his lunch and keys, but neglecting to take his laptop as he rushed to start his commute to work. He got chewed out by the IT manager, who had to lend him another pc, but otherwise the day was peaceful. Making it home, he opened up his own laptop and settled in to reply to some of his leftover work emails.

“Hey, where'd you go.” The unexpected voice made him jump, before he spotted Benrey’s model peering around the Internet Explorer page.

“Ah,” He started. “You're still here.”

“What did you think I was gonna do. And where'd you go.”

“I have a day job. So you gonna do anything useful while you’re here?”

“Huh?”

“You know, open Word, write my reports for me. Like Cortana.”

“Who's Cortana.”

“Nevermind, doesn’t matter.” He dismissed, but Benrey still stared out the screen at him,

“You... want me to open shit for you?” Gordon raised an eyebrow at him.

“Well, yeah. If I ask.” A pause, then a moment later, Word appeared, a blank document loaded up on the screen.

“...I didn’t expect you to actually do it.” Suddenly words started typing out at the top of the page but Gordon quickly deleted them.

“Hey Feetman, no fair...”

“No, I don’t trust you to actually write my shit, but thanks.”

“Whatever.” Gordon smiled at the screen as Benrey disappeared behind the word processor. As he typed, he could see other tabs opening up, as the AI entertained himself in the background.

The next Tuesday evening found the two of them both relaxing in Gordon’s small living room. Benrey’s laptop sat on top of the coffee table, a snaking cable plugged into the wall keeping the battery going. He was making a YouTube music playlist, listening to it while he kept adding songs at the end. Gordon meanwhile was curled up on the sofa with a book, absentmindedly sipping at his tea.

After the third replay of ‘Old Town Road’, Gordon gave the computer a withering look.

“You need to let up on the Youtube Benrey, you're making my WiFi bill go way up. If you just wanna listen to the same thing over and over then... just download the mp3 and quit using up my wifi.” Without his glasses he couldn’t see the AI’s expression but he knew Benrey would be smirking.

“But I like the music video.”

“I know you’re not even watching it, the video’s minimised. Turn it off.”

Benrey rolled his eyes hard and turned away, messing with the folders on Gordon's desktop. As he tapped them, some opened on the screen and he turned his attention to opening every single file he could see. Gordon rolled his own eyes and went back to his book, completely forgetting the conversation after a moment. A few peaceful minutes passed with only the sound of the photos app opening again and again playing in the background.

“Oh. It’s your shit kid.”

Gordon turned to the computer immediately, leaning forward to see. At the top of the series of windows Benrey had opened, was a photo from about a year ago, taken on the living room sofa with Joshie on his lap. Gordon's long hair framed his face and the stubble on his face was a lot less prominent than it is now. He had looked a little tired but still smiled at the camera, outshone by Josh's beaming sunny smile. The 2-year-old looked completely comfortable in Gordon's arms and he found himself smiling again now, looking at the photo on the screen.

“Your kid looks worse here than at Black Mesa.”

“Hey that's rude. And the photo in my locker doesn't count. I said it was Joshua cause that's my son's name, but the game's picture wasn't actually him.”

Benrey faced Gordon, and the light near the camera blinked on. He paused for a moment considering while Gordon looked into the camera with suspicion.

“You looked better back then.” Benrey announced, and Gordon’s face heated up - whether with anger or embarrassment, he didn’t know.

“Hey, that’s also rude, you dick. A lot can happen in a year, I’m working on it,” He rubbed one hand over his now short haircut and bearded chin, then crossed his arms across his chest defensively, “And I didn’t know you could see me?” 

Benrey's character model disappeared suddenly from the screen but Gordon could still hear him laughing through the computer’s speakers.

Another one of Benrey’s oddities, that Gordon had almost forgotten about, reappeared on a late Sunday evening. Gordon was beyond stressed. He had an incredibly important presentation to give first thing on Monday and he was physically vibrating as he repeated each line over and over. They were already perfected, every sentence in its place, but Gordon couldn't help feeling overwhelmingly nervous about the whole thing. It was a pitch to some key investors and it felt like the whole future of the company was riding on his back. He paced around the room in frantic circles, his words devolving into repeated “oh god”s, not noticing the camera light blinking on, or Benrey looking at him with blank expression.

“It's cool to be scared sometimes. It’s not cringe like the other shit you do.” The AI butt into Gordon’s rambles.

“I’m not scared, just worried! You don’t understand.” He snapped back. Benrey raised his hands passively,

“Sure bro, but you're good.”

Gordon was still wringing his hands, when a strange distorted sound came from the computer. It raised in pitch and tone and a calm aura washed over him. He didn’t notice the sound come to an end, only realising when he felt his hands no longer shaking and his breath stayed calm and steady. He looked over at the screen to see Benrey swamped in huge spheres in different shades of blue and purple, like an old bubble screensaver, and laughed quietly.

“Ah, that was the sweet voice, right?”

“Yea.” Benrey didn’t elaborate but Gordon didn’t mind.

“You’re good bro. No stress.” Benrey repeated as the sweet voice bubbles began to fade away

“Yeah, I guess you’re right buddy. I’m good.” He leaned over to close the powerpoint, then leaned back onto his bed to rest.

Due to their near constant interaction and close proximity, Gordon and Benrey had started to grow comfortable with the other around. Perhaps that’s why he was so surprised to find what horrors Benrey was scrolling through at 2am on a Friday night/Saturday morning. He’d woken up thirsty in the night, stumbling to the kitchen in the dark and pouring himself a glass, before walking back into the bedroom to check on what his friend was doing on the desktop. Blearily he looked at the bright screen and the image of Benrey smirking up at him in front of an open browser. Gordon looked at what was behind the AI, before quickly looking away.

“Benrey! What are you doing to my search history?” He exclaimed scandalised, spilling most of the mug of water onto the carpet.

“It’s just a joke bro. Ha funny.”

“What the fuck even is that? I can’t look at that!” He covered his eyes from whatever horrors Benrey had pulled up, trying to close the tab quickly.

“I- uh…”

“God! How embarrassing. I'm gonna have to wipe this now. It’s a work computer you know. It’s got good specs so I can load up the games I want but it’s still connected to the office network.” Gordon rambled in his tiredness, already sitting down wearily and clicking through his browser to the history tab. He clicked the delete browser history button and sighed in relief when it returned to an empty page. Benrey stood to one side, watching what Gordon was doing on his screen with caution.

For good measure, he continued onwards and pulled up different computer settings, searching through the task manager and control panel for what he was looking for. A page came up, with a few buttons and captions, including the wipe app history button he had been searching for. He pressed it and a pop-up appeared on the screen.

//This action cannot be undone. Proceed?//

Underneath were 2 buttons, cancel and confirm. Benrey suddenly spoke,

“Hey wait what you- I didn’t mean-”

“You've got to be careful with these things,” Gordon cut him off, and pressed the confirm button, watching as the green progress bar popped up and started moving. Benrey blinked out from his spot on the screen, probably choosing to hide out of Gordon's sight. “Make sure you don't mess with searches again. I can’t keep doing this or my boss is gonna think something weird is going on.” Benrey stayed silent. A little flame of anger flared up in Gordon's chest.

'Benrey, are you listening to me, you little shit?” When the rogue AI didn’t answer, that anger was quickly snuffed out.

“Hey. Hey, Benrey.”

He frantically shut down different tabs as he spoke, removing hiding spots from the screen, until he had cleared every last one. The screen was still empty.

“I forgive you, just don’t that again, ok?” He offered. Still no response.

What could he have done? Benrey had vanished as he had pressed confirm to clear his data. Had Gordon really...?

Sitting alone in his apartment, feet sodden and cold, the quiet had never felt so deafening.

__________

Early Saturday morning dragged into night then back through to Sunday as Gordon lay dazedly in the living room, gazing at nothing.  
He couldn’t bring himself to open up the laptop that sat on his bedroom desk idling in sleep mode. He had no outstanding reports or video calls to attend over the weekend, so he spent as little time as he could in the same room as the computer. Mindless tv played in the background and he only got up occasionally to eat whatever leftovers he could find in the fridge.

Eventually pulling himself together, he made his way back to his desk. He needed to write the email to Joshua that he was supposed to send the previous day, and the computer was the best place to do it. Even if the guilt of booting the system back up weighed heavy on his chest. He opened the cover typing in his password and waited tensely. The jingle of the start-up played, then his eyes roamed the screen as different apps automatically opened and began flashing him updates and messages. After a moment longer, he sank in his seat, as anything else… anybody else, failed to appear. One palm came up to cover his eyes as he rubbed at them, exhausted, and dropped his head.

“Hey.”

“Benrey!” Gordon exclaimed, shocked tears springing into his eyes as he looked back up to the laptop. Sure enough, there stood Benrey, looking the same as he always had. “Where'd you go? I thought I'd lost you.”

“I had to pick myself back together after you wiped me. Good thing you didn't do shit for a while actually really. When you delete things it doesn’t actually remove them, it just allocates them as free space. Makes them free, man. I just needed to figure out how to get back on your cringe system.”

“I don’t think I really get it , but man, I'm glad you’re still alive.” Gordon replied, bewildered but with a wide smile on his mouth.

“Alright.” Gordon knew the true tone behind the simple dismissal and kept smiling even as he relaxed back into the chair.

“You never did what I asked.” Benrey announced suddenly, causing Gordon to open one eye to look at him.

“What do you mean I never did…”

“You didn’t turn the game back on bro, for the others. It’s been more than a month. That’s too long for anyone to sleep, even you.”  
The guilty feeling that had been weighing on his mind returned in full force, this time at the sudden revelation that he hadn’t spoken to the other AIs in so long. Hadn’t even thought to say hi, or to ask for help when Benrey had been deleted. From the blinking of the camera light, it seemed Benrey noticed his expression,

“Hey, cringeman, don’t stress. They won’t care too much. Just start it. They wanna see you bro.”  
Steeling himself, Gordon double clicked the Half Life game on his home screen. Immediately a dark loading screen with the black mesa logo popped up, fading away to the forms of Dr Coomer, Bubby and Tommy looking down at him. As he gazed at the faces of the characters he was so familiar with appeared together on the screen, and listened to their greetings and admonishments, he realised he could really relax and enjoy the company of these friends a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> The sentence structure was pretty bland huh. I also didn't really know how to end it.  
> [I wrote this is a day. I can't believe it.]  
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed :) Please leave a comment if you have anything to say - I'd be happy to read it!


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